Fernando de Querol Cumbrera
Research expert covering construction, loans, leasing, savings, and debt
Residential construction in the United States - statistics & facts
Many cities and regions in the United States have seen housing scarcity, and soaring home prices. Middle-sized population centers such as Huntington-Ashland in Ohio were some of the metropolitan areas with the worst housing shortage in 2023. That means that residential construction projects were not able to meet the demand for housing in those areas. The overall spending on new private residential construction soared in the past decade, from 247 billion U.S. dollars in 2011 to 918 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. But as construction costs have risen in the past years and the demand for housing stay high, those figures may need to continue growing.
Materials used in residential construction
In the United States, resources, technology and practices are required to conform to local building codes and regulations. For example, construction materials (e.g. bricks, stones, or timber) that are to be used are usually dictated by the materials readily available to an area. Although consumption of cement in construction in the U.S. has kept rising in the past decade, wood frame construction is considered one of the most popular methods of residential construction in North America. Timber is also used for other purposes in the building, such as for the flooring, window frames, doors, etc. Nevertheless, the price of softwood veneer and plywood, as well as that of other types of lumber has been very volatile in the past couple of years.Home construction costs
The cost of construction may also vary based on site conditions, local regulations, and economies of scale. However, the price of land, construction materials, and equipment, along with the salary level are some of the main factors to be taken into account. For example, the cost of operating a mobile crane were much higher in U.S. cities than abroad. When taken into account, those elements can explain the variations in price between the regions of the country. Those differences in price can be in fact quite significant. Some of the cities with the highest average residential construction costs were New York for single-family homes and San Francisco for multi-family ones.
